An interesting question is if/when there will be big protests. Ignoring a judge is a breach of constitutional order, and if people don’t speak up for Venezuelan “gang members”, it becomes normalized, and quickly can escalate. I think we’ve all been waiting to see how long it would take to get here (if ever). Now what next???
I don't think protests will matter. Only if republican voters take issue then maybe some congressmen could take a stand. Currently the more reasonable hope is that the judicial branch escalates this to the supreme court.
There won't be a big protest over this because there is already too much fragmentation of protests and only so much organization and time, and also people are cowards.
In the last two weeks I've been to 3 protests in the NYC area:
- Stand with Ukraine
- Stand for Science
- Tesla Takedown
In the same time there have been protest for Khalil and a protest against the entitlement cuts, as well as protests in support of Veterans.
However, this (wrongful and illegal arrest/detention/deportation) _should_ be the biggest protest, because if Trump backed off all of the other things and was able to get away with normalizing this use of DoJ and federal law enforcement to disappear people into the legal system, then nobody will protest anything out of legitimate fear of being disappeared.
My observation of most Americans protesting is that they are doing it for the social/emotional aspects and aren't doing it with the intent of putting themselves in any real risk... and I think what you'll see is that when things get REALLY serious, those people will say things like "I was out there from 2017 - 2024 and protests didn't do anything, I'm not going to risk my career/family/well-being/life anymore for nothing".
> There won't be a big protest over this because there is already too much fragmentation of protests and only so much organization and time, and also people are cowards.
There won’t be a protest over this because the optics are bad. Democrats already learned their lesson that defending violent gang members doesn’t work in their favor because of the whole MS-13/“Animals” stuff back in 2019. There is simply no way to oppose this without looking sympathetic to murderous thugs.
This poses an interesting legal question. Since the judge ruled once the plane was in international airspace, would the US have jurisdiction? Or would say mercantile laws or airspace laws apply making it a weird legal hack to deport these "gang members"?
The judge specifically said that he did not have jurisdiction over deportees who had already landed on foreign soil, but could order planes in the air to return.
